A tale of two Carpenters

By any reasonable measure, Matt Carpenter's 2018 to this point has been a disappointment. After an abysmal start to the season offensively, Carpenter has rebounded significantly, but he has still been only roughly average at the plate. While Carpenter has logged material innings at first, second, and third base, he is generally not well-regarded defensively--his…

The Cardinals and the Pirates played a baseball game and here is what happened in it

First things first: This might be the last STL Bullpen post for a few days. We might do recaps, we might not! We don't have any planned non-recap posts until Monday. If something major happens, we'll probably write something. But it's a three-day weekend for us, too, sooooooo... Here were Friday's lineups: https://twitter.com/Cardinals/status/1000119358780211200 https://twitter.com/Pirates/status/1000134153487216641 Whoa,…

A re-examination of the Marcell Ozuna trade

A hallmark of the 2017 St. Louis Cardinals, a pretty good team which nevertheless did not make the playoffs, were pretty good but not amazing outfielders. With the exception of the genuinely excellent Tommy Pham, most of the Cardinals' outfield playing time was accumulated by Dexter Fowler (good hitter, bad fielder, basically average on balance),…

Is Tommy Pham an ideal leadoff hitter?

Leading up to the season, excitement stemmed in part from the lineup's anticipated 1-4 with Dexter Fowler, Tommy Pham, Matt Carpenter, and Marcell Ozuna. With all of them producing, we would expect a solid if not dangerous lineup. Yeah, anyway, this is baseball and that doesn't happen. All but Pham have been lackluster at best,…